Trash Mutant Interviews (TMI): Jenny Frison

You shouldn't judge a (comic)book by it's cover. But if the cover is done by Jenny Frison, then the comic is already worth it's price.

Frison is a cover artist, working on some of the best comics series currently out. You can see her covers on "Hack/Slash", "Ghost", "True Blood", "I, Vampire", Gail Simone's "Red Sonja", Tim Seeley's awesome "Revival", various "Buffy" books and many more. She's a relatively new name in comics, but she already managed to build an impressive portfolio, working for pretty much all the major publishers and always delivering absolutely stunning, attention-grabbing artwork.Today, I interviewthe Four Stars Studios artist, and we talk about horror comics, the role of a cover, the work of a cover artist and more!

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TRASH MUTANT: You've been working on a lot of great books lately, and we see your covers on more and more comicbooks from pretty much all the major publishers. And it's all beautiful stuff! Were you expecting to become such a popular artist when you started making comics covers?JENNY FRISON:I guess I was hoping I would, but I was just as terrified I would fail miserably. It definitely didn't happen overnight. I worked hard to get each job in the beginning, which sometimes came infrequently enough that I almost had to quit…and now that the jobs come easier, I have to work twice as hard to try to keep producing unique and successful work.You're from Chicago and that's where you met Tim Seeley, currently a frequent collaborator and your colleague in Four Star Studios. He saw your art and asked if you'd like to work on a cover for Hack/Slash, your first comic cover. Can you tell us more about how that happened? Were you a reader of Hack/Slash before that?

Actually, I had never heard of Hack/Slash or Tim when we first met. When he first asked me to do a cover (after meeting him at a Drink and Draw event in Chicago) I had no idea what a following it had, that it would eventually be one of my favorite titles, or that he would be one of my favorite people. I was lucky that he had somebody drop out for a cover that month. He called me the day after we met and asked if I could get him something that week. I was so excited, I think I did something like 6 or 7 sketches.

Some of Jenny Frison's fantastic art.

Do you have a favorite comicbook cover of yours or one that you have particularly fond memories of working on?

Maybe my cover for Hack/Slash: My First Maniac. It was actually not even done as a cover for Hack/Slash. It was really just a pencil study that turned out pretty well. I worked from a beautiful photograph I had seen and decided to turn it into Cassie Hack. When it turned out pretty nice, I decided to color it. I was trying to come up with some unpublished work that I could use for an art book that I had been invited to contribute to. Anyway, Tim really liked it so I had to hunt down the photographers and get their permission to use it for a cover. I think it was so fun because I wasn't working on a deadline. I was just trying to come up with different ways to solve problems. Usually, my favorite covers are ones that come together fast, because I've been lucky enough to have made the right choices quickly and I'm not sweating the deadline. But for this one, I got to play around for as long as I wanted. And it looked exactly how I was intending it to, in the end. That rarely happens.

Frison's pencils and the finished cover for "Hack/Slash: My First Maniac". Click on picture for more on the creative process.

A cover represents a comic on a shelf. Nowadays you can see previews of the comic online etc, and the covers don't have to fight so much for the reader's attention as it were in the news stand days, but a good cover can still decide whether a reader picks the book up. Do you feel some extra responsibility in your work because of that? Is there a pressure to have that single image represent the book well, and grab a buyer's attention?

I think that is the main purpose of my job. To grab attention. A cover artist's job is to make someone walking by in the comic store pick it up off the shelf instead of whatever else is nearby. To make the viewer feel something and catch their interest. Then, once I've tricked you into picking up my book, you can look inside and whoever's art is on the inside can convince you to buy it!

Right now you're the regular cover artist for Tim Seeley and Mike Norton's "Revival", one of our favorite new series. There's a lot to be said about the book; it has a dark, creepy tone, a fantastic setting and wonderful characters. How do these factor in to the creation of the covers? What's your favourite element to work with?

Revival has been great! I'm a big horror fan, but for some reason I specifically work on a lot of vampire comics. I've really enjoyed working on something that is dark and creepy, but in a different way than the allegory and mythology that goes with vampire imagery. The feelings I'm trying to evoke with Revival are much more tense than most a lot of books I've worked on. It's been really exciting. This is something that I've been wondering a lot: how much creative freedom do you have when you work on a cover?

Cover to "REVIVAL" #8 (click to enlarge)

It depends. Working for bigger companies usually creates less freedom, or at least it feels like it does because there are more people making the decisions. Creator owned stuff often allows lots. For example, Tim and Mike usually just tell me a plot point they want the cover to express or sometimes just give me the script and let me run with it. Or sometimes, if they have something specific in mind, they tell me exactly what they want. But even when I have the least amount of creative freedom, I probably still get a billion times more freedom than anyone working in advertising gets. That makes my job pretty great…and reminds me not too complain too much.You did covers for "Hack/Slash", "True Blood", "I, Vampire" and you get to draw some wonderfully creepy stuff for "Revival", like all the various limbs and organs on the cover of #8, the thing leaving Em's body in #5 etc. That's a lot of horror books or books with horror elements. Is horror the genre you're the most into or is it coincidential?

I'm totally into horror. Probably my favorite genre. I like the idea of finding beauty in the grotesque.

Frison's cover for "Cry Wolf"

You've mentioned in another interview that you plan on sticking to doing cover art, not really planning to venture into interior illustrations. Why is that? Were you never tempted to do interior art in comics?

I got my degree in illustration and then went to the Kubert School to study sequential art, but I found that I enjoyed the one image stuff I did in college a lot more. Even now, when I very infrequently work on something sequential, its much more labored than doing a cover. I really enjoy creating covers.

Is there a comic that you didn't yet work on, that you really wish you could do a cover for sometime in the future?

I've been really blessed. I love just about every book I've worked on and I honestly don't think I can come up with anything I feel is missing. Maybe Wonder Woman because I've always loved her, but I'm pretty happy as things are.What (current, past or both) cover artists' work do you enjoy the most? Who gets the Jenny Frison Stamp of Approval?

I basically decided I wanted to be a cover artist when I saw Adam Hughes Wonder Woman covers in high school (and everything he's done since!) and again when I saw James Jean's Fables covers. I didn't think anyone could replace Jean on Fables, but Joao Ruas did it. He's amazing. And I'm totally in love with both Jo Chen's and Steve Morris's work.

And finally: what's the best thing about being a comicbook cover artist?

Hmm…I think it's the creative freedom. Like I said above, even on my worst day, I get more freedom than most. It's probably the most creative freedom allowed in any commercial art industry. That and the fans. Working in comics makes meeting fans so much easier than most industries, I think. And meeting people who like something about what I'm doing means so much to me.

Last but not least: make sure to check out books with Jenny Frison's covers, like "Revival", the new "Red Sonja" series, all the Buffy books, "Ghost" and much, much more! Worst case scenario is that you'll have a comic with a truly beautiful cover!